Druchii.net and Asrai are becoming part of brand new Elves Online website. Part of the plan is a Facebook account. While we are not part of the merger (always the tradicionalists I guess ), we like the idea of joint Facebook effort for all flavours of elves. If there is someone amongst us who would like to help with the effort, you can read more here:

One option (which may have been discussed elsewhere, I'm not sure) is for Ulthuan.net to have direct links to the new elf forum (and vice versa) somewhere visible. This would invite forum goers to easily move from one to the other without sacrificing names or identities.

And yeah, as a long time mostly lurker I'm happy Ulthuan remains Ulthuan

_________________Formerly Modessa, but I forgot my password and associated email so I made a new account. Not that I did more than mostly lurk, but still...

Good to hear you're still enjoying the place Yeah, having some direct links to the other forums can really help connecting to other forums. I'll have a think to see if I can come up with some solution.

I noticed your signature. Do you want me to reset the password of your old account? Or are you fine with just a new account?

_________________

Eirik wrote:

Please try to remember that, no matter how 'official' the source seems, rumours are basically just a dictionary combined with a random number generator

Good to hear you're still enjoying the place Yeah, having some direct links to the other forums can really help connecting to other forums. I'll have a think to see if I can come up with some solution.

Sounds good

Quote:

I noticed your signature. Do you want me to reset the password of your old account? Or are you fine with just a new account?

I'd appreciate that if it's alright

_________________Formerly Modessa, but I forgot my password and associated email so I made a new account. Not that I did more than mostly lurk, but still...

Druchii.net and Asrai are becoming part of brand new Elves Online website. Part of the plan is a Facebook account. While we are not part of the merger (always the tradicionalists I guess ), we like the idea of joint Facebook effort for all flavours of elves. If there is someone amongst us who would like to help with the effort, you can read more here:

Well.. there's that. And the technical challenge. The merger of the forums requires the merger of two databases, without creating conflicts. These kind of operations are not supported by default software, so it will require a lot of handiwork on my part. I do have professional experiences with database migrations and consolidations, so it's not my first rodeo. But it requires some effort, if only to study phpBB's internal workings.

Death to the betrayers! How weak has the proud and noble asur become to sink to such low levels as to even consider joining forces with the leather lovers and wood huggers!

Only kidding.

Look I love this forum and have been here on and off for over half my life (including the earlier sites and the infamous 2004 migration ) but the reality is that the hobby is dying [GW killed it] and with it this site will also wither unless it evolves and adapts.

I'm not sure what that evolution should look like but there's a small enough number of posters nowadays that we could have a sensible thread about it.

I'm not so sure Tahl. 9th Age seems to be doing fine as does AoS, at least in the UK. Kings of War has only benefitted from the release of AoS. Quite a few of us are still playing 8th Edition. Definitely things are more fractured now. In particular race-specific forums have struggled because of this. But 9th Age has a huge and very active forum, AoS has a big presence on social media.

Tahl wrote:

this site will also wither unless it evolves and adapts.

Various race-specific sites have each reacted differently.The Stronghold has gone all-in on AoS. CDO was always hobby-first. Some sites are not just quiet like us but effectively dead. We are pretty much in the same position as we were a year ago. What we as mods did was restructure to provide equal space to the different systems. In practice most of our gaming content continues to be 8th Edition with a little AoS and 9th Age now and then. We have some P&M and a few other things.

Over the past five years Eldacar, Ricold and Daeron have handled the tech side. The basics of moderating have been mostly done by Rod and myself. Other mods have contributed a lot in other areas but they are much less active now, so we've lost some of those other areas. Rod handles the Loremaster stuff and answers a lot of posts. I do the Herald stuff and run blogs, largely for the benefit of the site. We both have very busy real lives and don't have the capacity to do much more. The site does of course have several other excellent blogs/plogs and very valued posters.

As Rod often says, it pretty much boils down to content. The site needs members posting pictures of their projects and discussing their games. Plus other things like OT of course and posters chipping in to comment on everything. So please guys, any and all contributions you make are very welcome. How to stimulate more of this is another issue. Ideas on this also welcome.

Looking back at the past 2 or so years, what GW did was not so much kill the hobby as drop a giant meteor on it, dinosaur extinction style. They blew up the ecosystem and started evolution over again. A few bits of the old hobby remain and are growing again. But other alternatives are coming out of the woodwork and are growing and evolving.

Most of our discussion remains on 8ht edition, since that is what both SA and me play, as well as a few of the other regular posters. There is some traffic in the other forums. But that needs time I think. One 'issue' with 9th edition I think is that it is still a game very much in flux. Combine that with the fact that it's community driven and the logical place for people to interact online is inside the 9th age community. Which is on their forum.

Does anyone know how Druchii and Asrai are actually doing? They started all this after all and had a lot of plans moving forward. Any news on them?

Rod

_________________

Eirik wrote:

Please try to remember that, no matter how 'official' the source seems, rumours are basically just a dictionary combined with a random number generator

I feel like I should maybe clarify my comments as they were perhaps not articulated well, and I of course mean no disrespect to the various admins who have, as always done their best to protect and secure Ulthuan.

By the "hobby" I specifically meant warhammer fantasy table top battles, which is what this site was created to support. Not the whole GW range of games or minature hobbies like the 9th Age.

I think it would be fair to say that most members arrived on this site after they developed an interest in the hobby, without that major draw we are unlikely to see new membership at the levels it used to be.

Currently we seem to be surviving on- Old members- Some remnant players who still play 8th- Some spill over from the 9th.

So I suppose what I am really saying is that I feel our unique selling point is dying and we need to investigate other potential areas that can draw in new members.

I feel like I should maybe clarify my comments as they were perhaps not articulated well, and I of course mean no disrespect to the various admins who have, as always done their best to protect and secure Ulthuan.

Thank you. No offence taken.

Tahl wrote:

By the "hobby" I specifically meant warhammer fantasy table top battles, which is what this site was created to support. Not the whole GW range of games or minature hobbies like the 9th Age

The thing is, AoS and 9th Age have inherited most of the gamers and have huge playbases. I don't think we can afford to prioritise traditional Warhammer and though I'm an 8th Edition diehard I personally don't think we should either. Many of the painting or battle report posts we get are from 9th Age players.

Tahl wrote:

Currently we seem to be surviving on- Old members- Some remnant players who still play 8th- Some spill over from the 9th.

Largely I agree. We do pick up a new member now and then through 8th edition.

Tahl wrote:

So I suppose what I am really saying is that I feel our unique selling point is dying and we need to investigate other potential areas that can draw in new members.

Hmm well im definitely late to the discussion but I'd have to say most points are valid on both sides and neither are the sole solution. The guys I used to play with have splintered a bit, some moved, others lost interest with AoS etc so we play maybe once or twice a year in personal tourney's during holidays. So that naturally reduces my ventures into the actual gaming info of the website, but what does keep me coming back is the story side that I'm in to (though had a significant gap, next part coming soon promise! ).

So I guess what I'm trying to say is everyone has certain parts of the forum that keeps them coming back so it's important to protect those pieces. At the same time it would seem viable to keep updating the forum with options for people who do play the other games etc. Not sure there's much else you could do other than trying to stay relevant or finding people that do play those new games and placing them in positions to promote the site and the game at the same time. Which I think is already being done from quick glances at the main page.

_________________Shadowy member of The Mage Knight Guild

Attack when they are unprepared, make your move when they least expect it.

I'll chip in something a bit related from over on Chaos Dwarfs Online:

Last year we were discussing the future of CDO. It did result in a consolidation of subforums to decrease a ghost town impression, and a lot of talk and ideas. CDO's main hurdle seems to be technical: So much of its code is customized, that we can't update the software without breaking it. Our Daemonsmith Xander have been looking around for free alternatives that will fit our needs, but have still to spot it. We'd particularly like to see software that makes uploading pictures on CDO be as simple as it is with Facebook. It's very much possible that the technical solution will see the old site frozen in stasis (and with much of the resources copied over by hand) while a fresh new site arise, but that will also risk alienating lots of users. We could potentially lose a lot more than we could gain. The proposed cure could be worse than the disease. Xander is busy with his loving family life and nothing more has been heard on that forum update front. Chances are big we'll just continue sailing on the same old software.

Something which both Lustria Online and Chaos Dwarfs Online are doing, is running regular contests. This seems to generate fun get-togethers and creativity, and seems to draw people back in. It may be worth attempting, if any volunteer have the time to spare. The trick to sustainability in a busy life is to fix a template, fill in the blanks each round and run contests very much by copy-paste.

A few years ago, my brother had a lot of good to say about Ulthuan.net with its Secret Santa and some quality logs on here. He was wishing to get involved with the Secret Santa in particular. Of all that he showed me, there was clearly quality content in Ulthuan's archives. You may be quiet now, like most of us, but you're not effectively dead, unlike several other army forums whose complete disappearance is just a matter of time.

It might also be worth compiling the best gems from Ulthuan.net (choice pickings), compile them in some pinned thread with due credit given and links to original threads, and try to play up the archive resource / treasure hoard bit with compilation and accessibility. Such compilations should of course be broadcast wherever relevant, on other forums and in Facebook groups.

It's a tricky situation all too dependent on the winds of larger trends.

You know what would be great for people like me would be some sort of painting inspiration thread. So maybe a compilation of the larger, higher page threads of army blogs that people on the website have done in the past (the ones who still have photos on at least), which would be so much easier than having to trawl through the forum hunting for them.

I think a great idea would be for the other forums out there to share tools and resources where possible, or websites that are of real use so that everyone can use software to upload photos direct to the forum or things like it.